Sabbaticalling: Weekly Roundup #13

Every time I write one of these posts, I cringe a little. The number keeps going up, which means my sabbatical is dwindling down. I've started to get a little burned out, a little restless, because of all the sitting. My pants fit differently. The positive side of teaching where I teach is that four days a week, I'm walking across campus several times a day, and then standing and walking and sitting and standing and walking as I teach, so there's a lot more movement. In exchange for movement, I've read more books than ever and I'm writing more poetry than I ever thought I could after graduating my MFA program. An even exchange, sure, but I'd like to fit into my pants.

The first day and a half of my week was dedicated to a freelance gig for reviewing materials about literature. Totally in my element. Lots of proofreading. Lots of editing. Lots of suggestions for analysis. Lots of nerdy reading and writing. This kind of writing was a nice break from the creative stuff. It really cleared my head.

Also within the first day and a half of my week, I went to Harry Potter Trivia. Also very literary. My team tied for 6th place. This is what sabbatical is for.

This was in the library parking lot. For convenience, I suppose.

I  read a poetry collection this week that I thought would be about gnomes but it wasn't really about gnomes. I also read Blunderbuss, Flapperhouse, Electric Literature, Booth, The Toast, McSweeney’s, and The Paris Review. Then I listened to the most recent episode of The Catapult (and man! Corinne Manning! amazing!). I went to the library and picked up two novels and a non-fiction book, and I have a stack of poetry collections one of my friends gave to me to read and then give away. Lots of reading coming up soon.

More writing: some poems (and then organizing notes to write future poems) and blog posts for here and for Poetry Has Value's March edition (coming soon). I also wrote some samples to apply for a freelance gig that entails writing about books. I mean, come on! I also started doodling down some ideas for this podcast I have in mind. I have a Soundcloud account and an email account for it. So far, so good. Now the actual planning and writing of it needs to happen.

Some journal submissions--one to a journal that I'd submitted to a while back that I found out never got my submission in the first place, and then I found out another journal also never got my submission, so I'm left wondering how many submissions are not landing anywhere to be read--and a MS submission to a press.

I got some poems accepted to some journals--yeay!--which is how I found out that some other journals have no record of my submissions. I wrote to them to withdraw the simultaneously submitted poems, and they were like, Who are you and what are you talking about?, in a nicer way.

Heehee--sidenote--that totally reminds me of the time my mother called me and was like, Your bike is here. And I was like, What? And she was like, Your BIKE. Is HERE! And I was like, I have no idea of what you're talking about right now. (I'm aware that maybe three people aside from myself will find this Hil. Air. Eee. Us. and I'm okay with that).

The new website is coming along. It's live, so you can go see it. Feel free to email me suggestions. I'm slowly bringing everything over there. But my blog? Do I blog there? Oooh, decisions!

For the rest of today and the weekend, I'll be reading and submitting and writing in between Ranger games and errands and time with Eddie and the fam. And working out hard core. I really don't want to buy new pants.